As a filmmaker, musician, performer, and multimedia artist, Sook-Yin Lee has expanded well beyond her 1990s MuchMusic icon status. She has been known for her countercultural work on screen, especially in 2006’s Shortbus, which drew controversy for depicting unsimulated sex and masturbation, and proved Lee to be a fearless performer. She continues to push the envelope creatively today.
Her latest film, Paying For It, which she co-wrote and directed, is a tender, funny, and remarkably personal adaptation of Chester Brown’s famous graphic novel of the same name. A memoir set in Toronto’s underground worlds of comix and sex work, the film depicts Brown’s unusual decision to pay for sexual favours instead of pursuing a traditional romantic relationship.
Lee’s unique ties to the story—she was Brown’s ex-girlfriend and her request to open up the relationship was the catalyst for Brown’s decision to become a john—provides a new and greater perspective to the book’s events and themes.
The Asian Cut spoke with Lee virtually, getting the details on her close relationship with Brown, her lived experience of the events depicted in Paying For It, and the importance of depicting sex workers with care.
(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)
The Asian Cut: I want to take you back to the beginning. What was your reaction the first time you read Chester Brown’s graphic novel, Paying For It?
Sook Yin Lee: Chester and I are each other’s extended family. We’re best friends, and we used to go out together. He is, in my opinion, one of the best storytellers ever, regardless of medium. I just always loved his work, [which is] very truthful and honest. His medium is comics, adult comics or comics with mature ideas, and so forth. He’s a beautiful artist and a great storyteller.
When I read his book—he had been mining his autobiography for a couple of graphic novels prior to that—and with this one, I was just very taken by it. I thought it was very bold and courageous. We were living together throughout that entire process. In fact, it was the transformation of our romantic relationship that did lead him to deciding to pay for sex.
When I saw how he had interpreted the events and portrayed himself in the situation in his memoir, it was very exciting to me. Not only the revealing of a world that I was not unaware of—the world of sex work in Toronto in the late ‘90s—but also he really launched a compelling argument for the decriminalization of consensual sex work. He had the wherewithal to write about the people that he met while paying for sex and recognize the unfair work practices that many sex workers have to abide by. Their work is essentially illegal and they have no labour rights, it puts them in harm’s way. So, a great part of his book was a political tract for the decriminalization of consensual sex work, which I thought was a really important conversation. I thought it was very brilliant.
I was surprised [that] I’m a character in his book, and he portrays the inciting moment of me suggesting that we open up the relationship. I was very young, and [our relationship was] a formative romantic relationship [for him]. I just got the job at MuchMusic. Our lives are quite different. He is very bookish, he’s very introverted, not very sociable—socially inept, actually. And then, there I was—going to shows, playing in bands, interviewing celebrities. I was super extroverted.
For a while, he would come out with me to shows, but he’d be the guy in the corner, reading a book. After a while, I was starting to develop crushes on other people. I didn’t want to break up with him because I loved him so much, and we were each other’s family. A lot of my friends in Vancouver were opening up the relationship, so I pitched that idea, and that is in the book. As far as that, I’m in there [in] very small amounts. Chester was very mindful not to reveal too much about the people involved in the story, myself included. Mostly the sex workers—he didn’t want to reveal their private details, so the way that he portrayed them was not really very much at all. Sometimes, [using] the frame, he would edit out their bodies. [The graphic novel] was very much myopically from the perspective of his world.
When I read that, I was really taken by so many aspects of it, and I asked if I could turn it into a movie. At that point, many filmmakers had approached him because it was just an astonishing account and perspective. He let me do it because he trusted me—that I would have the right touch. He would be nearby, and I could send him scripts. He granted me the rights to turn it into a live-action movie.
That was going to be my next question: how did you end up directing the movie? You mention other people showing interest in it, so I guess you didn’t have the idea to direct it immediately. What were the challenges of adaptation?
I remember thinking, “Oh, God. This one’s going to be good. This would be a great movie.” I pretty much soon thereafter was interested in the idea. But, I had to stand in line as well because there were a lot of other people asking.
When he did grant me the rights to turn it into a film, I thought, “Easy peasy. It’s a brilliant book. I’ll look at it like a storyboard. I’ll tell it verbatim.” I transcribed it into a scriptwriting draft. Chester and I looked at it, and we were like, “This is not a good movie.”
Comics and movies are very different forms. In his original source book, the last fifth of the book is academic notes, historic notations—it’s kind of like an essay that he’s writing. I had to figure out how to contend with those [notes] and how to turn that into a movie. It became very clear, very early on, that I was going to have to do much more in the adaptation.
I was saying to him, “I need to figure out how to tell the story with characters that undergo transformation, have flaws, make decisions, make decisions that backfire, make decisions that go to good places.” A sort of development, then a kind of a structural element that ties it into a movie where there is transformation, and an ending that makes sense. That was the challenge of taking the source material and distilling the finer points of his argument. Being able to identify what those important parts are, build them into the structure of the screenplay, but then also cover them up so that the political message isn’t in the forefront, but you’re couching it within the development of character. So, it’s all there, but it’s within a story that happens in a relationship between people.
That was really, really very difficult to do. It took me years. I would write, get very frustrated with it, and then hide it away in my drawer. [I’d] work on other things, work on other movies, work on other music, and then open up the drawer. Every time I looked at it again, I could see it with fresh eyes and identify where I had gone off track.
Another difficulty was Chester wouldn’t reveal to me any of the details of the sex workers. I had to spend a lot of time researching and speaking with sex workers, letting all of that percolate in my imagination, look into the source material for clues, and then dream some of the characters up. It wasn’t until I realized that if I just expanded the canvas a bit more—instead of his myopic perspective—[I could bring] to life the sex workers. And also the fact of the matter was the two of us were navigating all of these choices while living in a tiny 11-foot-wide row house.
When we made that agreement [to open up the relationship], I went the culturally acceptable route of dating, whereas he became celibate for two years because, like I said, he’s not very social. He doesn’t know how to flirt, and he wasn’t interested in another relationship. After being celibate for a couple years, then he became aware of the possibility of paying for sex. Then he finally got the courage to explore that option.
I thought to myself, “He didn’t really put very much of our lives in the backdrop of his book.” What if I do [include our lives], and it’s two people struggling to keep the relationship together, but then opening it up and seeing what happens. I could also tie in one of the big arguments in Chester’s book: the questioning of possessive romantic monogamy. That was the route that I was taking in a [conventional] way: to try to look for a quote, unquote, romantic partner.
As I began to work on that, I knew that I had to bring in many of the events from my own life. As much as Chester was vulnerable in exposing details of what was going on with his journey, then I felt that it was important for me to show the dangers of dating on my end. I threw myself into dating, really searching for somebody who would like me. And I made a lot of mistakes, as a lot of young people do.
It’s deliberate that Chester Brown obscures the sex workers in the book, but I really craved more points of view when I was reading. When I saw that you added your own point of view in your film, I was really appreciative of that, so thank you for including it.
The perspective is so important. This movie is inspired and adapted from his graphic novel, but it really can stand alone. It can exist in its own sphere, as the graphic novel exists in its own sphere. It reminds me of that Japanese film, Rashomon, where a situation happens and the entire movie is from the perspective of all the various people who are eyewitnesses. But everyone has a different account. What they see is completely different.
This thing happened in real life. Chester experienced it. I was there for parts of it. I do my take on it, and there’s this whole other take too. I would love to know what the sex workers’ take is. Denise—her name is Denise in the book—Chester has been in a monogamous, pay-for-sex relationship with her for over 20 years. God, wouldn’t that be wonderful to hear her perspective of this as well? There’s so many perspectives of any one given situation or event.
Do you think that if the film came out around the same time as the graphic novel [in 2011] would there have been a different reception versus now? With the way that people talk about sex work and the themes of the film?
Film is really a medium that is incredibly tied to the time it comes out. When I think of the best movies by Martin Scorsese, it was when he was talking about things of concern for young people—Taxi Driver and stuff like that. I think, oftentimes when movies work, it resonates with what’s going on now. So, it was really important for me—although the movie takes place in the late ‘90s and 2000s—I didn’t want to make a retro, nostalgic locket of a time in the past.
I think so many of the [film’s] ideas and questions are relevant today. The notions of questioning our biases and what we deem as how different relationships can manifest in terms of the way we conduct ourselves within intimate relationships. Those rules [and] those ideas are expanding and changing.
Sex work as a whole is now in the cultural discourse. It’s not as taboo to talk about. We’re now being able to talk about it in the context of labour rights. Each city has an advocacy group that is working on behalf of consensual sex workers to make sure they can do their work safely. There are activists working on behalf of decriminalizing consensual sex work. In Belgium, recently, they won. Consensual sex workers now have leave of absence, whatever things they need, dental rights, health rights. So, it can happen.
In one way, we are progressing as society. But, at the same time, there’s a push back for conservatism, back to family values. The traditional housewife: “Let’s all go back to the kitchen!” So there’s two polarities of both progress and regress, and it’s all in this exciting jumble of things. Social media allows us to express ourselves. Yet, at the same time, we can get clamped down at any time and have our voices censored. It’s a very important time—not just of sex workers rights—but human rights are really in a bit of peril or a potential peril. We really have to keep those conversations going.
[There is] the abundant need for caring for each other. Approaching what we do and our relationships—our working relationships, our intimate relationships, our friendships, our relationships with strangers, and each other—we just have to be taking so much care in that because there’s a possibility for us to really veer off into an uncaring world. The themes of this book are prescient and more important than ever. Women’s rights, trans rights, queer rights, and all those things that are in peril, we must be cognizant of our bias, of our behaviour, and of each other.
I think that if this [adaptation] was to come out when Chester’s book came out, it would have been very different. It might have been taken into the sphere of a more underground, transgressive tip. Like Todd Solondz or Welcome to the Dollhouse. Very quirky, weird, and taboo. It probably would have been a cult movie, if the right person had [gotten their] hands on it. It could also have—at the wrong time—been dealt with like a Judd Apatow [movie]. Like “Bro! Yeah, dude! Let’s get laid, man!”
With me, I wanted to make a tenderhearted film about relationships that humanizes everyone. That portrays sex workers in a way that doesn’t denigrate nor glamorize sex work. That doesn’t portray the johns as heinous, disgusting guys. It has more nuance. We can see that sex workers are not all victims, that they are people who have choices and decisions. It’s not easy work, by any means. [And with] every single person on the screen—even if they’re only there for a second—you feel where their life is coming from. I wanted to use tenderness and love and some jokes to let some of the more challenging subject matter live inside the viewer a bit.
